NOVEMBEE 17, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



619 



fit of any students who choose to attend. 

 In some places they are beginning to imi- 

 tate the Canadian system so well exempli- 

 fied in the University of Toronto, of organ- 

 izing local colleges with the specific purpose 

 of offering instruction in religious topics 

 and in other subjects which the state uni- 

 versity may not adequately support for 

 the benefit of students who desire to take 

 such work. 



For my own part, I believe some such 

 device as this last named will be found to 

 be a very satisfactory and helpful one, and 

 that by this means we shall solve this prob- 

 lem, which is none the less real and serious 

 because we have too often been inclined to 

 close our eyes and ears to the facts and re- 

 fuse to consider the question, imagining 

 that if we could only bury our heads in 

 the sand we should be free from the neces- 

 sity of meeting it and grappling with it. 

 When we can combine the freedom of the 

 state university with the opportunity for 

 instruction in religious matters which the 

 great mass of our people holds to be de- 

 sirable and necessary to true education, we 

 shall have taken a long step toward solving 

 not only this particular problem, but many 

 others which touch it and ramify from it 

 in many different directions. 



But if the first thought growing out of 

 the fact that this is to be a state university 

 is one of limitation, the second and pre- 

 vailing thought is one of freedom, of 

 privilege, of ease of movement, of facility, 

 of adaptation. 



No one will certainly accuse me of under- 

 estimating the work or importance of the 

 non-state university. I owe my own edu- 

 cation entirely, after leaving the public 

 high school, to the non-state school, partic- 

 ularly to the denominational, if not secta- 

 rian, school, and my own work as professor 

 and president has been, until I came here, 

 entirely in connection with such schools. 

 Northwestern, Harvard, Pennsylvania, 



which though in name a state, is in fact a 

 private institution, and Chicago represents 

 the course of my student and professional 

 life. No one, I believe, can entertain a 

 deeper feeling of gratitude to these insti- 

 tutions and to the men who have founded 

 and built them up, than I. No one can 

 have a higher appreciation of the value of 

 their services to the community than I, 

 and I may say that the more I learned 

 about each of them, the more I was im- 

 pressed with the magnitude of their service 

 to the community. 



The University of Chicago, for example, 

 has not only done the ordinary service 

 which any well equipped institution of 

 higher learning does, but it has played a 

 most important part in advancing the 

 standards and educating public sentiment 

 on higher education throughout the Missis- 

 sippi Valley. It is not too much to say 

 that every institution of college or univer- 

 sity grade in the middle west has profited 

 directly or indirectly by the magnificent 

 work of this institution — and by no means 

 the least among them, the University of 

 Illinois. It may not be out of place for 

 me to say that the University of Chicago 

 has been in large part, from this point of 

 view, William R. Harper, whose absence we 

 so much regret on this occasion. If Chi- 

 cago University had done nothing else in 

 the last fifteen years than provide an op- 

 portunity for the blessing-bringing activity 

 of William Rainey Harper it would still be 

 worth to the community all it has cost. 



But even if I owed no personal debt or 

 obligation to these institutions, if I had 

 never for an hour enjoyed the benefit of 

 instruction within their halls or from any 

 one who came from them as teacher, still 

 I should certainly be a blind, ignorant 

 guide indeed if I should by any remark 

 of mine belittle these institutions or der- 

 ogate in any way from the glory which 

 properly belongs to them. We believers in 



